Focusing on current affairs and public relations, the Uncaged PR blog will look at my views on the world through the eyes of a PR student.

11/24/2010

Google AdWords vs SEO - Part two

Firstly let me apologise for the long wait you have all endured whilst I created part two in this series of blogs. Part of the delay was down to a dissertation proposal hand in and part down to Friend B - who works for a small search engine optimisation (SEO) business in Doncaster - to get me some accurate details sent over.

Apologies aside, during a 21st birthday celebration night on in Leeds last Friday, the Google AdWords vs SEO debate took centre stage between 12 very close friends in the most unusual of all places, Fab Cafe. Now for those that haven't been to Fab Cafe before, the only way I can describe it is in the words of the great James Jones: "If your parents said to you when you were 12 that you had an unlimited budget to decorate your own bedroom, it would like this." To sum it up, the place is filled with toys and figures collected from the last 40 to 50 years. They have everything from a Back to the Future DeLorean model car, to a very scary model of Hellraiser's Pinhead.

Anyway, it seems I am getting a little side tracked today so let’s get back to the point. Some of these friends involved in the debate own small businesses and others are students, but it appears our views were very similar. Before I go into the evaluation here is a little summary of SEO and what it can do for you.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO ensures that customers can easily find your website. Using our example before, by searching on Google the words 'plumber' and 'Doncaster', you want your website to come up first. This is important to businesses as with over one million new web addresses registered every month, there needs to be a simple way for consumers to find their way through all of the sites. The consumer does this by using a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Google is the largest search engine with user searches reaching over 200 million every day.

There are specific techniques used when building a website that can determine whether or not a search engine can actually find the website to begin with, and then ranks that site in its database. These techniques are referred to as search engine optimisation (SEO) and are really quite complex. Certain aspects of SEO could be by having relevant content on your website, such as the word plumber appearing on every page, or the word plumber built into your HTML.

The benefit of SEO is that the more relevant you make your online content and the more SEO tricks you apply to your site, the further you will appear up in the Google natural search. If you are getting a lot of traffic through your website it could result in leads, sales, information or advertising. This also mean your website appears in Google organically for free.

NOTE: This blog is not to advise you on how to use SEO to your advantage. Friend B is kindly put together three tips to better your SEO, but I felt it was only fair to those that have helped we don't give away their entire secret.

Cost

Friend B explains: "Like Google AdWords the cost is calculated on how competitive certain keywords are. For example, 'Lose Weight' is highly competitive and would be worth many thousands to achieve first page rankings. However, if you were looking for a service locally 'divorce solicitor Leeds' then it is much easier to get first rankings and could be only about £100-£200 a month to maintain first page rankings. Google's algorithm has recently been updated where by its smarter at reading the code of the sites and sites are crawled more frequently which means rankings are changed more frequently. This is why SEO has become more expensive as websites need to be optimised more frequently. But overall, ranking on the first page of Google for long tail keywords isn't difficult or expensive, and unlike AdWords you don't have to pay for the clicks. It's almost like free advertising."

Summary

So SEO seems like the least expensive option and something that should you know how, can be done for free. The issue seems to be it is quite technical and may require some in depth reading and hours sat at your computer scanning and editing line after line of HTML coding.

You also have to consider with SEO what you are actually trying to achieve. What will the benefit be to your organisation? What will get your blog to the top of the Google search for keywords Public Relations?

With SEO I can already see the massive benefits for student bloggers like myself. If every time someone searched for Andrew Davies on Google and uncagedpr.co.uk or this blog appeared on the first page, I can imagine it would massively increase my followers. It would also look pretty amazing if any potential employer search for my name on Google and instantly came across my work. Having this sort of online presence can do great things for a student. Just look at the success of Ben Cotton as just one example.

Beautiful work. My first a major concern regarding SEO is that Google are changing their algorithm almost daily. This is part one of a series of blogs which will look at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and Google AdWords. Thanks for sharing this post so much.